Just curious, if during an interview, your potential future employer asks “Let’s say you did an analysis for me. After presenting your work, I tell you that, I disagree with you findings. You propose a strategy A, well I think a completely different strategy B will work out better. What would you do?”
FYI, I answered “I will put myself in your shoes and try to understand your point of view. Maybe our strategies sound different, but there is some common ground between the two”.
Seems like a good response. I think understanding the reason for the disagreement is important: does the disagreement represent dissatisfaction with your work product, or is it the result of different information being brought to bear, or different assumptions about priorities and what is an acceptable risk.
Occasional disagreements happen and aren’t necessarily bad. Constant disagreements are potentially problematic because they can undermine confidence and trust. At the same time, many times, dude diligence ends up resulting in a number of “let’s pass” results. If that’s known going in, and that you may do a lot of work for things that don’t get the trigger pulled, it’s easier to deal with.
In my first position out of school I had to submit revenue and profit projections to give to Wall St. on a quarterly (public company) as well as monthly basis. I had constant disagreements with my manager who would constantly tweak my models thinking she knew better. Well, my projections hit within 5%. Hers were missing by 15% and I was getting calls from executives as to why “my” projections were not hitting. I let it slide for a few months because I thought I was new and she knew better, etc. But, it was putting me in an awkward situation. Finally, after 3 months I let the execs know it was not really “my” projections and “my” projections were near exact. My manager came back to me and said “I was going over her head” and stepping in places I had no business. I told her that these execs were calling me and I didn’t call them. That didn’t help. She said we needed to fix “our” projections. Finally, she let go of her reigns on the projections for a little bit, but still seemed to hold a grudge against me as she was this power hungry manager with 20 years more experience than me and many levels above me. Things seemed to be ok even though she said she was accepting my projections but I was taking ‘full blame’ if something went wrong. That was ok with me as the execs seemed to have me on speedial anyway. Our projects were the cash cow of the sector. Any variance accounted for a large amount of profit variance for the sector. Then another issue came up with her using funding pools from some contracts on other project work, which is illegal. It was also really messing up my projections. We fought tooth and nail on this and she was so pissed she put me on some kind of probation and gave me a written warning. When the execs found out what she was doing, she was kicked off the projects and kicked off the team in the sector. The next day, she was cleaning out her office and I thought she again might need some help … so I asked … you need any help clearing these boxes out of your office? lol - she was pissed. — but yeah I meant to highlight that it is a good interview question, but in real life it can be quite painful at times to deal with this
